CHAPTER IV

EGYPT UNDER THE OLD AND MIDDLE KINGDOMS-.

3200-1800 B.C. (?)

 

 

1. The IVth Dynasty

 

WITH Senefru we begin the second era of Egyptian history: the Age of the Pyramid-builders. This king has sometimes been assigned to the beginning of the IVth Dynasty, but if he is Sephouris, not Soris, and Sharu is Soris as seems most probable, he must be regarded as the last king of the IIIrd Dynasy, Sharu as the first of the IVth. Nevertheless Senefru must be grouped with the kings of the IVth Dynasty rather than with those of the IIIrd. The great kings of the first part of this period are, then, Senefru, and Khufu, Khafra, and Menkaura, the Cheops, Chephren, and Mykerinos of Herodotus, the Chemmis, Kephren-Chabryes, and Mencheres of Diodorus, the Souphis I, Souphis II, and Mencheres of Manetho.

The age of these earliest kings, who with the legendary founder of the kingdom were always remembered in Egypt, has been called the Age of the Pyramid-builders. And the great Pyramids of Giza will remain as their monuments till the end. They are the mark which the kings Khufu, Khafra, and Menkaura have for ever placed upon the land which they ruled nearly six thousand years ago. They are, as is universally known, the tombs of these kings, placed among the necropoles of their subjects on the low ridge of the desert which juts up at the edge of the cultivated land north-west of ancient Memphis and south-west of modern Cairo. Already in their time the desert-border in the immediate neighbourhood of the centre of Memphis was too crowded with the sepulchres of kings and commoners to allow of the great structures planned being erected any nearer the city. Tjeser had built the Step Pyramid, the most ancient in the necropolis, some two or three centuries before in the part nearest the city. Senefru had gone farther south, to Dahshur and Medum, to build his two pyramids. Khufu went farther north; his successor Radadf, the Ratoises of Manetho, farther north still, to Abu Roash, north­west of Cairo; Khafra and Menkaura came back to the spot chosen by Khufu. The pyramid of Sharu is as yet unidentified. Of his reign, as of that of Radadf, we know nothing, and both were kings too ephemeral to build much.

 

Tjeser Pyramid

 

In front of the royal tombs stood their funerary temples, already important buildings of hewn stone, with pillared courts forming an outer or public temple and an inner fane, and with numerous magazines for the storing of the goods of the king's temple and the offerings made to his spirit. The temples of Khafra and Menkaura have both been excavated recently. The latter has yielded remarkable treasures of art, for the halls of a royal temple were filled with figures of the king whose memory was venerated in it.

As the retainers of the Thinite monarchs were buried in, or at any rate in annexes of, the tombs of their masters, so the courtiers of the Memphite kings were interred in the neighbourhood of the pyramids of their lords; but the milder manners of a more civilized age probably no longer demanded their enforced departure to the next world in the company of their deceased patrons; when death came to them they were buried as befitted their position in tombs surrounding the tombs of those whom they had faithfully served in life. But while the tombs of the kings were lofty pyramids, those of their nobles were humbler structures, now called, on account of their resemblance to a low bench or seat, mastabas, from the Arabic word mastdba, “bench”. These mastabas are on the model of the brick tombs of the earlier period in Upper Egypt, but are built of stone, like the pyramids. Each royal pyramid is surrounded by regular streets of these mastabas, reproducing in death the dwellings of the courtiers round the palace of the king in life.

The pyramids of Seneferu mark a considerable advance in structure on that of Tjeser, but that of Khufu, the “Great Pyramid” of Giza, marks a greater advance still; in size and mass it is the culminating point of the series. That of Radadf is tiny in comparison; Khafra’s rivals Khufu’s; Menkaura’s is far smaller again. But in art of construction and carefulness of work, Khafra’s is superior to Khufu’s, and Menkaura’s would probably have been the most beautiful of all, only it was never quite completed.

Our wonder at the absolute command of men and material to which the building of the pyramids bears witness, is as nothing to that which is inspired by a contemplation of the grandeur of their design, and, still more, the mathematical accuracy with which not only the design generally, but its details, down to the almost imperceptible junction of the stones in the inner passages and chambers, could be carried out in the fourth millennium BC. The brain-power which is evinced by the building of the pyramids is in no way inferior to that of the great engineers of the present day. The Egyptians had attained all the essentials of a civilization as fully developed as our own as early as 3000 BC.

 

THE PYRAMIDS

 

In art, while relief sculpture had not yet attained the excellence of the next dynasty, and we see crude experiments like the coloured inlay of the tombs of Nefermaat and Atet at Mediim, yet the sculptors of the IVth Dynasty had attained the mastery of sculpture in the round, a mastery which was not reached by the Greeks until after the re-birth of their civilization and the sixth century BC. It was to be a limited mastery, and we shall see that the limits that were soon to be set to it were destined never to be passed. But it was the first great art of the world. The enthroned diorite statues of Khafra from Giza, the small standing groups of Menkaura and his queen, and of Menkaura with the goddesses of the nomes, discovered by Reisner in the king's tomb-temple, and now at Boston and Cairo, the Rahetep and Nefert at Cairo, the “Scribe Accroupi” of the Louvre, the Nenkheftka of the British Museum, to name only the works of the very first rank, are (with the exception of that little ivory king of the Ist Dynasty that we have already mentioned), the most ancient masterpieces of all art (leaving out of account, of course, the art of palaeolithic times (Dordogne and Altamira). We do not notice coarsely carved legs or wooden arms, when we see those wonderful faces which are the men themselves. The rest of the body is, whether avowedly so or not, a sketch, an impression : it was perhaps not intended to be a faithful transcript as the face was intended to be, and evidently was. Under the next dynasty we find splendid work, and the art of relief-sculpture has now been much developed; but the figures of this time somehow do not please us so well as the freely natural kings and princes of the IVth Dynasty. Statues of this kind were found in most of the chief mastabas of the IVth and Vith Dynasties: they were sealed up in a recess of the tomb, known by the Arabic term serdab, and were apparently intended as secondary residences for the ka or “double”, in case the actual body was destroyed.

 

“Scribe Accroupi”, the Louvre

Nenkheftka (left guy). British Museum

Egyptian couple. British Museum

 

The tombs of the members of their courts at Medum and Giza give us a great deal of information as to the names of the great nobles of the days of the pyramid-builders, and with regard to the various civil offices and priesthoods which they held. The perusal of a list of these various civil and religious offices shews how far formalism had advanced in Egypt even as early as the days of the IVth Dynasty.

From the inscriptions of these courtiers we gain some hints as to the succession of the kings and their relationship to each other. These hints entirely confirm the testimony of the king-lists; Manetho's names are correct, but his order and dates seem wrong. Mertitfes, the chief wife of Seneferu, survived him and married his successor, Khufu, who was therefore not nearly related to his predecessor. In fact, he does not seem to have been a native of Memphis, and was probably a prince of Middle Egypt, since an important town near the modern Benihasan, the capital of the nome of the Oryx, was named under the Middle Empire Menat-Khufu, "Nurse of King Khufu" : it is probable that he came thence. Queen Mertitfes survived Khufu also, and was "honoured in the presence of King Khafra", as she says in her tomb-inscription. She passes over Sharu and Radadf, whose reigns seem to have been very short. Her life was evidently prolonged, but it is quite evident from the fact that she was chief wife of both Seneferu and Khufu, and was an honoured figure at the court of Khafra, that the reigns of these kings can hardly have been as long as the historians pretend. Diodorus, following Herodotus, makes Khufu reign fifty years and Khafra fifty-six; Manetho assigns them sixty-three and sixty-six years respectively. To Sharu and Radadf can hardly be assigned less than about ten years, so that if we assume that she was far younger than Seneferu, and was perhaps only twenty-five at his death, she must, if Manetho's figures are correct, have been nearly ninety at Khafra's accession, which is a great age for Egypt, and she lived on after that. Khufu's reign need not have been longer than the twenty-three years of the Turin papyrus, and Herodotus' fifty years for Khufu is probably "contaminated" by the (very probable) fifty-six of Khafra.

Khafra is said by Herodotus to have been Khufu's brother, which is manifestly impossible; Diodorus is in doubt between the authority of the great polygraphon, which he is afraid to reject, and that of tradition, which told him that Khufu was succeeded by his son Chabryes. Accordingly he doubles Khafra, and speaks of both "Kephren", the brother, and "Chabryes", the son, of Khufu. Chabryes is evidently another Greek form of the name Khafra, and the fact that Khafra was Khufu's son is confirmed by a papyrus. The succession of Menkaura to Khafra is confirmed by the contemporary monument; Diodorus makes him his brother, but this is improbable, if Khafra's reign was as long as the annalists make it. His pyramid was never finished, so that we may credit Diodorus' information that he died before its completion, and Herodotus' implication that his reign was no long one Manetho's sixty-three years for him is, then, evidently a mere copyist's repetition of the same number of years assigned to Khufu.

Menkaura was succeeded by Shepseskaf, "Noble is his Double", the Sebercheres (i.e. Shepseskara, "Noble is the Double (Ghost) of Ra") of Manetho, the Sasychis of Diodorus, and Asychis of Herodotus. We know nothing of any king corresponding to Bicheris or Thamphthis, who in Manetho's list respectively precede and succeed him. His immediate succession to Menkaura is made certain by the testimony of his contemporary Shepsesptah, who was admitted among the royal children by Menkaura, married Shepseskafs daughter Khamaat ("the Goddess of Law appears"), and was raised to fill every office he possibly could fill. It is evident that no man could possibly do all the work which these colossal pluralists were officially credited with doing: the work of most of their offices must have been done by subordinates, but we may be sure that their emoluments went to the noble office-holder.

It is quite evident that the king was, even more than under the ist Dynasty, the fountain of honour: a despotic monarch surrounded by a servile court to whom he dispensed dignities at his will: the government of the country could be carried out well enough by the stewards and factors of the absentee governors and princes, who were retained in the king's presence-chamber in life and were buried at his feet when they died. The common people could be used to build pyramids with. Yet there is a little doubt that the popular stories of the cruelty and impiety of the Pyramid-builders which are related by Herodotus and Diodorus are grossly exaggerated, if not wholly baseless. They seem to have been pious monarchs enough: Khufu and Khafra both contributed to the building of the Temple of Bubastis, and Hordedef, son of Khufu, was, according to old legends, a most pious person, and "discovered" chapters of the Ritual, like King Semti of old.

Khufu, Khafra, and Menkaura must have left a tremendous impression on the minds of the Egyptians, which was always kept alive by the everlasting presence of the three great pyramids on the Libyan hills: when even the meanest Egyptian looked at the mighty Khuit, the lofty Ueret, and the beautiful Hra, he thought of the three great kings of old whose names his father had told him and which he would repeat to his son, and his son to his son, throughout the generations. The pyramids kept their names fresh in the minds of the people, and folk tales innumerable would naturally gather round them. The archaistic revival of the XXVIth Dynasty, which looked for its inspiration to the models which the tombs of the courtiers of the Pyramid-builders provided, and resuscitated the cults of the kings themselves, must have given a considerable impulse to these popular tales, which Herodotus and Diodorus after him found current in the land in their day, and utilized for their histories.

 

2. The Vth Dynasty

 

Though we pass out of the presence of the great Pyramid-builders, we are still in the age of pyramid-building. The civilization of the Vth Dynasty is practically the same as that of the IVth: the face of things is the same. But there is one difference noticeable. Whereas under the older kings Horus had been the supreme deity of Egypt, if supreme deity there was, with the accession of USERKAF, the first king of the Vth Dynasty, the Sun-god Ra of Annu or Heliopolis, the Biblical On, advances to the first place, which, in conjunction later with the Theban deity Amen, he held ever afterwards, Horus becoming in some aspects identified with him. We find the beginnings of this special devotion to Ra already under the IVth Dynasty, when the names of Khafra, Menkaura, and Shepseskaf are compounded with that of Ra, "Shepses-ka-f" meaning "Noble is his (the Sun's) Ghost," as "User-ka-f" means "strong is his Ghost". Names confounded in this way now become common. And in Userkaf's time the royal title "Son of the Sun", which has already appeared under the IVth Dynasty, becomes a regular addition to the royal style. A curious legend current under the Empire relates that a magician named Dedi prophesied to King Khufu that three children should be born to Rud-dedet, the wife of Rauser, a priest of Ra, by Ra, and that the eldest of these, who was to be high-priest of Ra, would succeed to the throne after the reign of Khufu's son. And when the three divinely-begotten children were born, Ra sent the goddesses Isis, Nephthys, Meskhenit who presided over births, and Heket the goddess of sorcery (the original of the Greek Hekate), with the god Khnum who forms the bodies and the kas of kings, to Rud-dedet, and they named the children Useref, Sahra, and Kakau. Now the first three kings of the Vth Dynasty, which, as we have seen, was especially devoted to the cult of Ra of Heliopolis, were Userkaf, Sahura, and Kakaa. We can hardly doubt that this legend points to the fact that the kings of the Vth Dynasty belonged to a new family, descended from a priest of the Sun-god: and in all probability Userkaf himself was, as the legend says, originally high-priest of Ra under the last king of the IVth Dynasty, and succeeded him as king. Each king of the dynasty built for himself a special sanctuary of the sun-god, the central feature of which was a great single obelisk rising out of a mastaba-like erection, and the priesthoods of these Sun-temples were given to specially honoured nobles. The best preserved of these Sun-temples is that at Abu Gurab, between Giza and Abusir, which was built by Ne-user-Ra. On a great mound was erected the truncated obelisk, the stone emblem of the Sun-god. Before it was a great court in which still stands a huge circular altar of alabaster, several feet across, on which slain oxen were offered to the Sun, and behind this are six great basins, also of alabaster, over which the beasts were slain; drains run out of them to carry away the blood.

 

Sun-temple, Abu Gurab

 

Manetho says this dynasty came from Elephantine, a curious statement, which can, however, be explained. The priest Rauser, no doubt the father of Userkaf, is said in the legend to have been priest of Ra in the town of Sakhebu, probably in the neighbourhood of Heliopolis; Prof. Petrie has pointed out that this name was probably corrupted in later times to the better known, Abu (Elephantine), and so Manetho's mistake arose. Meyer regards all three as usurpers, of whom only the third, Kakaa, was the founder of a regular royal line. H. Bauer finds that the records of Sahura and Kakaa have been erased on the "Palermo Stone", which was probably erected about the time of Ne-user-Ra. But if Sahura or Kakaa had been objectionable to Ne-user-Ra or his successors, it is hardly likely that their fine pyramid-temples would have been allowed to stand. As a matter of fact the dynasty gives the impression of hanging well together. Its style of building is characteristic, as also is its religion, with its peculiar Sun-temples. We find no break in culture which would be caused by war between usurpers, and the series of royal seals found in the temple of Neferarikara shews that the kings succeeded in as orderly a manner as did those of the XIIth or the XVIIIth Dynasty. I see no reason to doubt the historical character of the main theme of the legend, that Userkaf, Sahura, and Kakaa were brothers who succeeded one another. Kakaa founded the royal line. They were usurpers in the sense that a new dynasty which displaces an old one usurps its place, but we have no proof that they usurped the throne from each other, or succeeded in anything but regular fashion. It is possible that Bauer is mistaken in his conclusion as to a damnatio memoriae on the Palermo Stone.

The great development of art and architecture under the IVth Dynasty was carried to its apogee under the kings of the Vth, who were also Pyramid-builders. Their tombs at Abusir, south of Giza, are neither so large nor so well-built as those of Khufu and Khafra, but the architecture and decoration of the great temples which were attached to them shows a more highly developed art than that of the earlier funerary temples. The Abusir pyramids are also arranged in a great group of three, the graves of the kings sahura, neferarikara, and Ne-user-Ra. The three funerary temples, which have been excavated by German archaeologists, have provided us with new material which may be said to have in some sort revolutionized our conceptions of the development of art under the Old Kingdom. The sculptures on their walls are the earliest temple-reliefs known, and it is probable that the custom of decorating the walls of temples, like those of tombs, with sculptured representations of gods and kings and their doings now first began. Important events in the lifetime of the king are now represented on the stone walls of his funerary temple: thus in that of Sahura we have reliefs picturing a naval expedition on the Red Sea, probably sent by him to fetch turquoise from Sinai, where he erected a monumental tablet in the Wadi Magharah. Allegorical representations show the king, as a hawk-headed sphinx, trampling on his enemies. And as we see them on these ancient monuments the gods appear in their regular hieratic forms and attitudes, and wearing the same costume as in the days of the Ptolemies. This costume of the short waistcloth was that usually worn by the kings and great men of the Old Kingdom. The Vth Dynasty artists depicted the gods dressed like their own contemporary rulers. The proper attire of the gods and of the king when depicted performing religious rites was thus fixed at the time of the Vth Dynasty, and never varied henceforth, though on secular monuments of later times we see the king shewn wearing the actual costume of his period.

In the Abusir pyramids we as yet find no inscription, but in the pyramid of Unas, the last king of the dynasty, which was built at Sakkara, south of Abusir, the new custom of inscribing the interior chambers of the tomb itself first appears. These inscriptions, which were copied in the pyramids of the succeeding kings of the VIth Dynasty, consist of a series of invocations and incantations intended to ensure the. safety and happiness of the king's spirit in the next world, and, though often savage and absurd enough, are of the highest possible interest to the student of anthropology.

We are yet far from the time when higher minds could supplement the barbarous gibberish of the "Pyramid Texts" by splendid hymns to the gods; the probability is that the primitive beliefs still held unmodified sway. Philosophers had not yet progressed beyond the consideration of the vicissitudes of the daily life around them, and the elaboration of wise saws thereon, they had not yet begun to think about the gods: these were still left without question to the stupid interpretation of the priestly sorcerers. The schools of On had not yet arisen, though it was at this time and under this particular dynasty that the foundations were probably laid at On of that specially Heliopolitan tradition of religious interpretation which was later to develop that "wisdom of the Egyptians" which Moses learnt, and the culminating, the beautiful monotheism of Akhenaten the heretic.

From this temple-reliefs at Abusir, and other monuments of this period, as well as from the Pyramid Texts, we see that all the gods of the later pantheon were already worshipped, with the exception of the foreign importations of later days, such as Bes, and of course the Theban Triad, Amen, Mut, and Khensu. The last-named is once mentioned as some sort of inferior djinn in the Pyramid Texts, but Amen is unknown. No doubt he was already worshipped at Thebes, a local form of Min, the presiding deity of the Thebaid, and not to be dis­tinguished from him by the Memphite and Heliopolitan priests. Yet after a few centuries he was to be identified with the great Ra of Heliopolis himself, and later still to be elevated to the position of "King of the Gods".

According to Manetho, Unas (Onnos) was the last king of the Vth Dynasty, and his successor TETA founded a new dynasty, the VIth, of Memphite origin. Perhaps by his time the Heliopolitan origin of the existing Pharaonic family had become obscured after a long series of reigns in the royal city. From the monuments no change of dynasty can be perceived. Teta's tomb at Sakkara was decorated in the same style as that of Unas with magical texts for the comfort and protection of his soul, and the pyramid itself bears the same style of name as that of his predecessor. The pyramids of his successors are also decorated in the same way.

 

3. The VIth Dynasty

The central figure of the Vlth Dynasty is the great King Merira Pepi I, the Phiops of Manetho, who left an impression on Egypt that was never forgotten. His younger son, Neferkara PEPI II, born to him late in life, was notable for what is probably the longest reign in history, as he ascended the throne at the age of six and died a centenarian.

Traces of the energy of the elder Pepi are seen all over Egypt from the Delta and Sinai to Elephantine and Sahal. The builder of the great stone temples, forerunners of the triumphs of a later age, which had been begun by the Pyramid-builders at Tanis and Bubastis, the first monumental evidences of Egyptian activity farther north than the Memphite territory was pushed on with vigour by Pepi, who also devoted considerable attention to the ancient religious centres of Dendera, Koptos, and Hierakonpolis. At the latter place a magnificent copper group of the king and a small son, perhaps Mehtimsaf, was found by Mr. Quibell in the course of the excavations carried on in 1806; the two statues, that of the king being over life-size, that of his son a little more than two feet high, are built up of plates of copper fastened together with copper nails. The faces are marvellously well modelled, and the inlaid eyes give the two figures an almost uncanny appearance of life.

In the far south the district of the First Cataract, which had apparently been conquered by the kings of the First Dynasty seems also to have occupied much of Pepi's attention. In his time it had become purely Egyptian, and was administered by Egyptian chiefs who lived and were buried at Aswan, though related ethnically to the Southern Egyptians, the population south of Elephantine was regarded as barbarian, and the relations between the Egyptians and the Nubians were much the same as those between Europeans and non-Europeans at the present day. We possess records of the travels of great officials of this period, Una, Herkhuf, Pepinekht, and Sabni, in the southern countries, from which we learn the names of the various Nubian tribes of the day; we see that their territories were regarded as being in some sort included in the Egyptian "sphere of influence", the leaders of the Egyptian expeditions, sent to bring back products of the southern countries to Egypt, and probably with the ultimate idea of penetrating overland to the "holy land" on the Somali coast (Punt), were called in to settle tribal disputes as representatives of the higher intelligence of the great civilized empire in the north, much as English travellers of distinction might be called in to advise by an Indian chief today. There is even some sort of half-recognition of Egyptian over­lordship; but no actual sovereignty is acknowledged.

In the North Egyptian expeditions, which had reached Sinai as early as the time of the Ist Dynasty, are found in Palestine by the time of the Vth, with warlike intent, as in a tomb of that date at Deshasheh we see a picture of an attack upon a Semitic town, which can only have been situated in Southern Palestine. Under the VIth Dynasty we find the much-travelled Una leading primitive expeditions against the Heriu-Sha, "the Sand-Dwellers" of the Isthmus of Suez and the Gulf coast.

It was a magnificent kingdom which was bequeathed by the first Pepi to his two sons. But, imposing as it was in appearance, it had within it a serious defect which after the reign of the second Pepi brought about swift decay, and eventual disintegration. The great kings of the IVth Dynasty marked the apogee of the original patriarchal kingdom founded by "Mena" and his successors. This kingdom was centralized round the king, whose nobles were courtiers who lived and were buried around him. The local government of the country was carried on by deputies of the king or of favoured nobles who held their lands at the king's pleasure. These deputies were probably not hereditary. From the very beginning Egypt had been divided into hsaput, called by the Greeks "nomes"; we find these nomes already under the Ist Dynasty, and in the South they were probably older. In such a country as Egypt, where the yearly inundation obliterates all landmarks every year, fixed boundaries were very early established. The nomes were ruled by the overseers of absentee courtiers. But the accession of the new line of the Vth Dynasty seems to have weakened the royal hold over the court. Up to the end of the reign of Ne-user-Ra, who, judging from the magnificence of his works, was a powerful monarch, the centralizing tradition was no doubt more or less kept going, but during the reigns of his weaker successors it must have been given up. We now find a new development. The great nobles, instead of being buried as a dead court around a dead king, are interred in their country estates, which they now rule directly and locally. They are primarily the "Great Men of the Nomes," and their court functions and titles diminish. Under the Vlth Dynasty this becomes the settled constitution of the state, which is now a feudal monarchy, resting on the loyalty of the local princes. Under a strong prince like Pepi I, who would make himself obeyed, this condition of affairs was not detrimental to the state, but under weak kings it meant its destruction. This happened : the successors of Pepi II, whose reign was probably a long and a weak one, were nonentities; the chiefs, having no king whom they could respect, fell to fighting among themselves, and Egypt became a chaos. Art and civilization degenerated woefully, and the Theban kings of the Xlth Dynasty, who, after perhaps two centuries of confusion, eventually restored order, had to recreate both.

A series of shadowy kings, the VIIth and VIIIth Dynasties of Manetho, reigned but did not rule at Memphis. Two of them, Neferkauhor and Neferarikara II, more energetic than the rest, made their authority recognized at Abydos and even as far south as Koptos, but only for a moment. The princes levied war upon one another without check; nome fought against nome, until at length some chief more energetic and unscrupulous than the rest should find himself able to impose his yoke upon his neighbours and so give peace, perhaps only an ephemeral peace, to at least a portion of the distracted land.

Some such powerful chief fixed the seat of his power, about two centuries and more after the time of the Pepis, in the city of Henen-nsuit or Henen-su, Herakleopolis Magna in Middle Egypt, and either he or one of his descendants found himself powerful enough to usurp the dignity of the legitimate sovereign at Memphis, and to proclaim himself Pharaoh. It is probable that after this impotent kings of the rightful line still reigned at Memphis, but the centre of real power was Herakleopolis.

 

4. The Herakleopolites (IXth Dynasty)

 

Only one of the Herakleopolite kings has left any very tangible evidence of his presence, and he was possibly the most active of them; perhaps the very man who first supplanted the Memphites and assumed the royal dignity. This was Khati or Ekhati, who bore the throne name Meriabra, "Beloved of the Heart of the Sun". The name of the king occurs as far south as the First Cataract, so that it is evident that he securely controlled the whole Upper Country, as well as upon smaller objects. There is little doubt that this king or a second Khati with the throne name UAHKARA is identical with the Akhthoes of Manetho, who places him at the beginning of the IXth Dynasty, and says that he became more terrible than all those who had gone before him, that he did evil unto the people in all Egypt, and that he finally went mad and was devoured by a crocodile. This story has the same ring as others about other kings who left a powerful impression, whether of good or evil, behind them; Menes was devoured by a crocodile, Cheops and Chephren were impious oppressors.

The Herakleopolite rule was at first peacefully acquiesced in by the more southerly nomes, but later on it was opposed, especially by the princes of the Thebaid, whose original seat seems to have been Erment (Hermonthis), but whose power was early transferred to the more northerly Apet (Thebes). Here was laid the foundation of the future Theban hegemony in Egypt, which was to last undisputed for over fifteen hundred years. Gradually the chiefs of Apet increased in power, the boundary of their territory was gradually pushed northwards beyond Koptos, until it marched with the southern frontier of the land which owed more direct allegiance to Herakleopolis. Then the Herakleopolite allegiance was thrown off, and a series of bloody wars seems to have begun, in the course of which the Theban princes did as the Herakleopolites had done before them, and themselves assumed the Pharaonic dignity. Finally, the Herakleopolite power was overthrown. Memphis had long been a nome, and her kings, the rightful seed of Ra, had disappeared. Egypt, weary of war, accepted the Theban sceptre, and a new period of Egyptian history began, which we know as the "Middle Kingdom", to distinguish it from the "Old Kingdom" of Thinis and Memphis, and from the "New Empire" which commenced after the expulsion of the Hyksos invaders.

We know of the civil war between Herakleopolis and Thebes chiefly from the inscriptions in the tombs of the princes of the important city of Siut, in Middle Egypt, who were adherents of Herakleopolis, and formed the frontier defence of the Herakleopolite kings against the Thebans. They bore the names of Khati and Tefaba alternately from father to son. The first Khati prided himself on not being a rebel: "I," he says, "am one void of rebellion against his lord: Siut is content under my rule, Herakleopolis praiseth God for me, the Nomes of the South and the Lands of the North say, 'Lo! whatsoever the prince commandeth, that is the command of Horus (the king)'." It would seem that in his time the South was submissive, but Tefaba his son was compelled to reconquer the South.

In the time of Khati II, son of Tefaba, the Herakleopolite king MERIKARA was driven from his capital by a Northern attack from Memphis, and took refuge at Siut with his feudatory, who also fought with the South. The later chiefs of Siut were unable to maintain their resistance to Thebes: the princes of the hated "Town of the South", which is angrily mentioned in one of these inscriptions, eventually broke through the barrier which had so long stopped their way northwards, and it is probable that after the fall of Siut the fate of the Herakleopolite dynasty was not long delayed. We do not know the name of the prince of Thebes who took Siut and finally destroyed the Herakleopolite power. The most ancient Theban chief of whom we have any knowledge is a certain Meri, who apparently lived not long after the time of the Pepis: two statues of him, in different costumes, from his tomb at Dra Abu'l-Nekka, are preserved in the British Museum. In his day Thebes was no doubt under the rule of the Mentu-worshipping princes of Erment, who later on transferred their residence to the more northern city. An hereditary nomarch of Thebes, belonging apparently to the line of Erment, is known to us, named Antefi. He seems to have been regarded as the founder of the Theban race of kings, for Senusert I dedicated a statue of him at Karnak, and it is very probable that he was either the first Theban chief of his line or the first to establish a southern principality independent of Herakleopolis. One of his descendants, possibly his immediate successor, assumed the Pharaonic dignity and became the first king of the XIth Dynasty, but whether this was before or after the capture of Siut and destruction of the Herakleopolite dynasty, it is difficult to say.

 

5. The XIth Dynasty

 

After Antefi I the only kings of the Xlth Dynasty who were remembered in later days were the powerful monarch Neb-hapet-Ra Mentuhetep and his successor Sankhkara Mentuhetep, who immediately preceded Amenemhat I, the founder of the XIIth Dynasty. An earlier king, Neb-taui-Ra Mentuhetep, also appears in the lists; he must have preceded Neb-hapet-Ra. From contemporary monuments, however, we know of the existence of a group of three still earlier kings, an Antef "the great" who bore the Horus-name of Uah-ankh, another Antef with the Horus-name Nekhtnebtepnefer, and a Mentuhetep with the Horus-name Sankhabtaui, who succeeded in this order. It is probable that the "Horus Ancestor" (tep-a) Mentuhetep, and another Antef, mentioned in the inaccurate Karnak list, are to be identified with two of these kings. We know nothing of them, or of one or two kings who ruled in Nubia at this time, and may or may not have been members of the Theban dynasty. Nor is Neb-taui-Ra much more than a shadowy figure. Like the later Egyptians, we know more than a little only of the reigns of Neb-hapet-Ra and Sankhkara. Neb-hepet-Ra was in later times regarded as one of the great pharaohs, and he appears almost as the progenitor of the royal line of Thebes. Like Uah-ankh, the real founder of the dynasty, he reigned long, and it is probable that the two kings were confused in later tradition. It is by no means improbable that Neb-hapet-Ra was the first Theban who really ruled over the whole country. It is significant that Uah-ankh and his two successors bore no throne-name, as rightful pharaohs would but seem to have laid stress upon their Horus-names, which were the appropriate designations of kings who ruled the patrimony of Horus of Edfu, Upper Egypt alone, since. originally, as we have seen, the Horus-name was the sacred designation of the Upper Egyptian Kings who founded the Ist Dynasty. Neb-taui-Ra was the first to adopt a throne-name, and he included it in his cartouche with his personal name, thus having only one cartouche. Neb-hapet-Ra was the first to bear two cartouches as undisputed king of all Egypt. He may have deposed the last Memphite, as it is probable that the Memphite kings had continued to reign in the North after the end of the Herakleopolite dynasty. He seems to have altered the official spelling of his throne-name and have changed his Horus-name during his reign; appearing first as the Horus "Neter-hetjet" ("Divine White Crown", the crown of Upper Egypt), later as the Horus "Sam-taui" ("Uniting the Two Lands"). It may well be that this change of name is significant, and that the later Horus-name was adopted to mark the reunion of the two lands, just as, in far earlier days, Khasekhem seems to have changed his name to Khasekhemui ("Appearance of the Two Powers") after he had conquered the North.

Of the details of Neb-hapet-Ra's re-organization we know nothing, but it is probable that even towards the end of his reign a subordinate king, who bore the title of "Son of the Sun", was allowed to exist in Upper Egypt above Thebes. His name was Antef, and it is probable that he is one of the kings whose names are found in Nubia.

Of this important reign an important monument has come down to us, the funerary temple of the king at Der el-Bahri, in the western necropolis opposite Thebes. Here, in a circus of huge cliffs of extraordinarily impressive form and splendid desert colour, Neb-hapet-Ra excavated what is either his tomb or his cenotaph, a long gallery extending far beneath the mountain, and ending in a chamber faced with gigantic blocks of granite and containing a naos or shrine of alabaster and granite, which held either his coffin or the statue of his ka. Above the tomb was cut a great trench in which was a temple with its sanctuary, and on a half-artificial platform jutting out towards the cultivated land was, later in his reign, erected a memorial pyramid of brick cased with thin marble slabs, surrounded by a colonnade and approached by a sloping ramp, on either side of which at the lower level was a colonnade marking the face of the platform, which was faced on the other two sides with splendid walls of fine limestone. Everywhere the walls were sculptured with scenes of the king's wars and hunting-expeditions, which, since they are now in a fragmentary condition, have told us less concerning the events of his reign than the development of art in his time: on this they have shed new and valuable light. Between the pyramid and the tomb were erected six small funerary shrines above the tombs of certain priestesses of Hathor, the goddess of the place, who were also concubines of the king, and that of the queen, Aasheit. It seems very probable that these priestesses were all slain at the death of the king, and accompanied him to the tomb to be with him in the next world. In the time of the Ist Dynasty, courtiers and slaves seem to have been killed, as we have seen, and buried with the kings: and the custom was at least occasionally carried out as late as the time of Amenhetep II.

The development of art under the XIth Dynasty, on which the sculptures of this temple have shed considerable light, is perhaps the most interesting characteristic of the dynasty. The fine Memphite art of the Vth and VIth Dynasties had been not unsuccessfully imitated in Upper Egypt, but civil war had caused a woeful degeneration in the arts, and the Theban sculptors' work of the beginning of the XIth Dynasty is extraordinarily crude and barbarous: modelled relief has been forgotten, and both figures and hieroglyphs are badly sized, spaced, and drawn. But an enormous improvement is seen at the beginning of the reign of Neb-hapet-Ra, to which the shrines of the priestesses, which were completed before the temple as a whole, belong. A remarkably high relief, adorned with brilliant colour, is characteristic of these shrines. The figures have still an awkward, archaic appearance, however, and this hardly vanishes in the later style of the reign, seen in the decoration of the temple-corridors, which otherwise again approaches the standard of the Vth Dynasty. The portraits of the king and his queen are splendidly executed, and bear the same impress of truth as do those of the IVth and XIIth Dynasties.

These sculptures have a personal interest usually lacking in the works of Egyptian art, since we probably know the name of the great artist who carried them out. This was very probably a certain Mertisen, who lived in the reign of Neb-hapet-Ra. He tells us on his funerary stela, now in the Louvre, "I was an artist skilled in my art. I knew my art, how to represent the forms of going forth and returning, so that each limb may be in its proper place. I knew how the figure of a man should walk and the carriage of a woman; the poising of the arm to bring the hippopotamus low, the going of the runner". He also tells us that no man shared this knowledge with him but his eldest son. Now since Mertisen and his son were the chief artists of their day, it is more than probable that they were employed to decorate their king's funerary temple.

When, therefore, the kings of the XIth Dynasty reunited the whole land under one sceptre, and the long reign of Neb-hapet-Ra Mentuhetep enabled the reconsolidation of the realm to be carried out by one hand, art began to revive; and just as to Neb-hapet-Ra must be attributed the renascence of the Egyptian state under the hegemony of Thebes, so must the revival of art under the XIth Dynasty be attributed to the Theban artists of his time, perhaps to Mertisen and his son. They carried out in the realm of art what their king had carried out in the political realm.

Neb-hapet-Ra was a warrior and warred against Libyans, Nubian, and Semites, the latter being called "Aamu" and (possibly) "Rutenreru", later on to become familiar to the Egyptians as the people of Ruten, or Syria. So that he may have invaded Southern Palestine.

Sankhkara Mentuhotep was no such great figure as his predecessor. His reign was solely distinguished by a great expedition to the Land of Punt, conducted by a military mandarin of the name of Henu. Henu proceeded by the Hammamat road to the Red Sea coast at Kuser, and then, after great sacrifices had been held, proceeded on shipboard and sailed down the coast to Somaliland, returning eventually in safety to Koptos, whence he had set out, laden with the incense, gum, and myrrh which he had been sent to obtain, and with stone which had been quarried for the king in the Hammamat valley. The tradition of connection with Punt is kept up, and we seem to be reading an account of an expedition of the Vth or Vlth Dynasty once more: indeed it is improbable that much more than two or three hundred years had elapsed since Baurdad went to Punt, and Una and Herkhuf explored the regions of the Upper Nile. But there is one point which differentiates Henu's expedition from these of the earlier time. The older explorers often seem to have travelled overland from the Nubian Nile valley by way of Abyssinia to Punt; Henu, like Enenkhet before him, went to Kuser, and thence by sea. It looks as if the overland route was no longer safe for Egyptian caravans; and the southern military expedition of Mentuhetep II indicates that the peaceful relations of Egypt with her southern neighbours in the days of Asesa had given way to a state of war and unrest, which compelled the Egyptian messengers to Punt to voyage thither by sea. Henceforward, even when Nubia was absolutely subject to Egypt, the sea-route remained the regular way to Punt, and Hatshepsut's great expeditions followed in the steps of that of Sankhkara.

 

Deir el-Bahri - Temples of Mentuhotep and Hatshepsut

 

6. The XIIth Dynasty

 

The XIIth Dynasty, "the Kings of the Court of Itht-taui", as the Turin Papyrus calls them, succeeded the XIth with­out a break. It is very probable that Amenemhat I, the first king of the new dynasty, was the vizier of Sankhkara, and from his name (''Amen at the head") we may suppose that he was a Theban. His descendants, however, specially favoured the district between Memphis and the modern Fayyum, and there they established their court, in the fortress-palace of Itht-taui, the "Controller of the Two Lands". They were, however, nominally Thebans, and they venerated Amen as well as Sebek, the crocodile-god of the Fayyum.

We are thoroughly well-informed as to the course of Egyptian history under the XIIth Dynasty. The names of the kings, as given by Manetho and by the older Egyptians themselves, with their regnal years, as far as they have been ascertained, are given below. The names on the XIth Dynasty lists agree perfectly with those recorded on the contemporary monuments of the dynasty.

 

Manetho, etc.	Lists and Monuments.		Years of Reigns approximately
	Personal Name	Throne Name
Ammenemes	Amenemhat I	Sehetep-ab-Ra	30 (10 years co-regeney with Senusert I).
Sesonkhosis (sic; read Sesostris)	Senusert I	Kheper-ka-Ra	35 (3 years co-regeney with Amenemhat II).
Ammanemes	Amenemhat II	Nub-kau-Ra	35 (5 years co-regency with Senusert II).
Sesostris	Senusert II	Kha-kheper-Ra	28 (?) (8 (?) years co-regency with Senusert III).
Lakhares(sic: read Khakhares)	Senusert III	Kha-kau-Ra	30
Ammeres (Lamaris)	Amenemhat III	Ne-maat-Ra	45
Ammenemes	Amenemhat IV	Maa-kheru-Ra	9
Skemiophris		Sebek-neferu-Ra	4

  The total number of years thus indicated for the XIth Dynasty is 216, which is in practical agreement with the 213 of the Turin Papyrus. It must be remembered that the years of the kings as given above are approximate; but they are certainly correct within five years either way.

Amenemhat's accession was not accepted without a struggle. We know from a very curious papyrus book, regarded as a classic under the XVIIIth and XIXth Dynasties, which was apparently written by King Amenemhat I, the Sbayut or "Instructions" of the king to his son Senusert, that upon one occasion at least his life was attempted by conspirators within the palace, probably at the beginning of his reign.

The reigns of the kings of the dynasty were hailed by their contemporaries as marking a veritable renascence of the kingdom. The inscriptions of the time are full of references to the time of disunion which preceded them, compared with the present age of plenty and peace within the frontiers of Egypt of restored sanctuaries and widened borders. "Twice joyful are the gods," says a hymn of praise addressed to the third Senusert, "for thou hast established their offerings. Twice joyful are thy princes; thou hast formed their boundaries.... Twice joyful is Egypt at thy strong arm; thou hast guarded the ancient order." If the kings of the XIth Dynasty, after reuniting the two lands, made them to live," and "increased their life," those of the XIIth also marked the renascence of the kingdom out of the slough of despair into which it had fallen during centuries of civil war in their nome ; Amenemhat I is the "Horus who renews the births" of the people (Uhem-mesuf), Senusert I is the "life of the births" (Ankh-mesut), Senusert II is the "helmsman of the two lands" (Semu-taui). And from the evidence other than that of official titles we can see the living interest which these energetic monarchs took in their law and people. Amenemhat III added a whole province to Egypt by his reclamations in the Fayyum, and it has been supposed that he regulated the flow of water in and out of Lake Moiris, which served to hold back part of the surplus of the high Nile and to allow it to flow out when the river was low. The regulation of the Nile-flood, the life of Egypt, was their constant care; as their frontiers advanced southwards into Nubia, Nilometers were established at which the height of the water was year byyear carefully measured, and whence theimportant intelligence was transmitted to Egypt. The conquest and annexation of Northern Nubia, if it did not add a fertile province to Egypt, at least enabled the kings to carry out this great object, which seems to have been ever present in their minds, the careful watching and regulation of the Nile. Everywhere throughout the land the boundaries which had been thrown down during the period of confusion were renewed, and it is probable that some sort of cadastral survey was at least partially carried out for this end. The frontiers of the Nomes were finally delimited, and the powers and status of the Nomarch princes carefulty defined in relation to each other and to the royal authority. While retaining many tokens of the independence which they had gained during the decline of the central power at Memphis, they were now again brought into due subjection to the royal authority.

We gain a sufficient idea of the wealth and state of the local princes from the splendid tombs of the chiefs who are buried at Beni Hasan and el-Bersheh in Middle Egypt. The princes were laid to rest in chambers at the bottom of pits which were sunk in the floors of the splendid halls of offering, the walls of which were covered with paintings depicting the life of their owners on earth, executed in the hope of securing for the dead similar well-being in the underworld. Of the art with which these paintings are executed we shall have occasion to speak later. Below them on the slopes of the tomb-hill were buried the officials and functionaries of their little courts, their stewards, physicians, and retainers of various ranks, each like his lord, with his own funerary state of great rectangular wooden coffins and the models of fellah servants and boatmen which were supposed to turn into ghostly ministrants in the under­world, and are so characteristic a feature of the burial customs of this period.

But this wealth and state was not destined to last. It has been supposed, though the fact is not certain, that the powerful monarchs Senusert III and Amenemhat III still further modified the position of the local princes, and laid the foundations of the bureaucratic local government which we find in the time of the Empire. It is certain that splendid nobles of the type of the Khnumheteps of Beni Hasan and the Thutiheteps of el-Bersheh are no longer met with during the second half of the XIIth Dynasty, and that then we find purely royal officials much more prominent than before. Gradually the royal power had increased, largely by means of the king's control of the local levies in war. The continuous wars of Senusert III in Nubia served to establish the control of the king over the bodies of his subjects, to the exclusion of that of their local chiefs. And we cannot imagine that so tremendous a despot as Amenemhat ill seems to have been would have allowed local despots like the Khnumheteps and Amenis of Beni Hasan to exist.

 

7. The Works of the XIIth Dynasty

 

The power and wealth of the kings of the XIIth Dynasty is well exhibited in the magnificent buildings which they set up. To them the temples of Amen at Karnak, of Ra at Heliopolis, of Ubastet at Bubastis, of Min at Koptos, of Hershef at Herakleopolis, not to speak of many others, owe the beginnings of the splendour which we know under the later Empire. Senusert I was a splendid temple-builder; by him were erected the first great obelisks in Egypt, in front of the temple of Heliopolis, and we possess the account of the ceremonies which marked his founding of the temple of Karnak. Colossal statues of the kings adorned the newly erected fanes, and a large number of the colossi which now bear only the names of later monarchs were really erected by the kings of the XIIth Dynasty.

The huge reclamation works carried out by Amenemhat III in the "Lake-Province" of the Fayyum are a testimony to the energy of this dynasty. The interest of the kings was probably first drawn to this oasis-district by its proximity to their royal burgh or fortress-palace of Itht-taui. Possibly with the view of conciliating Herakleopolitan sentiment, or possibly on account of some family alliance with the descendants of the royal house of Herakleopolis, the earlier kings of the XIIth Dynasty not only devoted special attention to the temples of the erstwhile royal city, but actually transferred their residence from Thebes, where the headquarters of the XII Dynasty had been fixed, to a position midway between Memphis and Herakleopolis, and in close proximity to the Fayyum. Thebes and Upper Egypt being thoroughly loyal to the royal house which was of Theban origin, and was doing so much for the Nubian frontier-territory, this position, which, as has been said, was admirably adapted to secure a general oversight of the whole country, could be safely adopted as the royal headquarters. The old Memphite tradition of burying the kings in pyramids in the neighbourhood of the necropolis of Memphis was also revived.

The interest of the kings of the XIIth Dynasty in the neighbouring lake-province began with its founder, Amenemhat I, who seems to have erected a temple at Shedit (Crocodi-lopolis). Senusert I is commemorated there by his tall boundary-stone or "obelisk" at Begig or Ebgig, not far off. Amenemhat III's great work was, besides the construction of a dyke at Illahun regulating the outflow from the lake, the reclamation by means of a great curved embankment of, according to Prof. Petrie's estimate, about forty square miles of fertile territory to the north and east of Shedit. On the dam, at a point directly north of Shedit, the king placed as a memorial of the work, two colossal statutes of himself, each thirty-nine feet high, and each cut from a single block of white quartzite. These were mounted on a platform, and must have been seen far and wide across the lake; the effect of the sun's rays reflected from the glittering quartzite must have been remarkable.

The famous Labyrinth at Hawara which amazed Herodotus so much, and is described by Diodorus, Strabo, and Pliny, was a great funerary temple erected by Amenemhat III (Lamaris) in front of his pyramid at Hawara. Shining white stone, probably quartzite and alabaster, was largely used in its construction, probably for facing blocks, and this caused Pliny to describe its walls as of Parian marble. This fact, and the great number of its halls and corridors, caused the Greeks to compare it with the famous labyrinth of Minos at Knossos in Crete, and also, led no doubt by the king's name "Lamaris". to transfer to it the Cretan appellation of "labyrinth". Its halls were decorated with representations of the various nomes of Egypt, a fact which has caused the attribution to the building of the character of a sort of state office or clearing-house for the affairs of the nomes, but there is no probability that this view is in any way correct; the nomes were merely represented as ministering to the glory of King Lamaris or Moiris, and his gods.

 

8. Foreign Relations

 

For the building of these mighty works and for their decoration and furniture an extensive provision of fine stone, metal, and wood was necessary. Royal expeditions constantly visited the quarries of Syene and the Western Desert for granite, diorite, and amazon-stone, the mines of Sinai for malachite and turquoise, and the forests of Syria for wood; while the unhappy Nubians were compelled by force to furnish the necessary gold. At the same time commercial relations with the surrounding nations were much developed ; in exhange for the products of Egypt, Punt, Syria, and Greece sent to the Nile-land their most valuable commodities.

The Hammamat road led still, as of old, to the port of Sauu (Kuser) and the "Holy Land" which was on the way to Punt; under Senusert II we hear that stelae on the figures of the king were set up in Ta-neter, and in the preceding reign an officer named Khentekhtai-uer returned in peace from Punt, his soldiers with him; his ships voyaged prosperously, anchoring at Sauu. Egyptian settlements existed along the coast south of Sauu: at Nehesit, "the Negro-town", Ptolemy's Nechesia; Tep-Nekhebet, "the head" of the tutelary goddess of Southern Egypt, which is Berenike, and elsewhere. The voyage along this coast to Punt was the theme of many wonder-tales of adventure, one of which, the "Story of the Shipwrecked Sailor", which dates to this period, reminds us of the tale of Sindbad. The hero of this romance set forth in a ship 150 cubits long and 40 wide, with a hundred and fifty of the best sailors in the land of Egypt, who had seen heaven and earth and whose hearts were braver than those of lions. But the great ship was wrecked and only the teller of the tale was wafted safely to the shores of a mysterious isle, a sort of Aeaea or Hy-Brasail, whereon dwelt a gigantic serpent, who was 30 cubits long and whose beard exceeded 2 cubits; his body was encrusted with gold and his colour appeared like that of real lapis. "He uprose before me and opened his mouth; and while I prostrated myself before him, he said to me 'What hath brought thee, little one, what hath brought thee?'." Then he carried the sailor in his mouth to his dwelling without hurting him, and commanded him to tell his tale, which he did, and to which the serpent, commiserating him, replied that he need fear nothing, for after four months he would return safely to Egypt, while after his departure the island would be changed into waves.

So the frankincense and myrrh of Punt, as well as the fine granites and beautiful green felspar (amazon-stone) of the Eastern Desert, were brought through half-mythical dangers by the king's officers to the royal court. The turquoise and the copper of Sinai also needed capable caravan-leaders and bold soldiers who would bear great hardships to bear them back to their master.

A new mining-centre was established at the Sarabit-al-Khadim, and the works in the Wadi Maghara were prosecuted with success. An inscription of an official named Hem-uer gives some idea of the trials and disappointments of the mining captains among the arid rocks and deserts of Sinai. Hem-uer was unsuccessful in his search for the turquoise and copper which he was sent to obtain, and his men threatened to desert. In despair he invoked the aid of the goddess of the mines, Hathor-Mafek, and she aided him. "The desert burned like summer," he says, "the mountain seemed on fire, and the vein exhausted; the overseer questioned the miners, and the skilled I workers who knew the mine replied : 'There is turquoise to all eternity in the mountain'. And at that moment the vein appeared." Amenemhat ill sent many expeditions to Sinai.

The "land flowing with milk and honey" which lay beyond the desert of Suez as yet tempted no Egyptian king to permanent conquest. Already in the time of the Vth and VIth Dynasties warlike expeditions had reached Southern Palestine, sent in reprisal for marauding attacks on the Delta. But they were never followed up: the climatic conditions of Palestine were strange, and the land itself probably seemed uncanny to the Egyptians, nor were its products sufficiently valuable to attract the cupidity of the Egyptian kings. Also, the Rutenu, the settled and civilized Semites who lived north of the Aamu, the pastoral nomads of the Negeb and Southern Judea, were formidable in war; occasionally their attacks had to be guarded against. In the reign of Senusert III we find that a place named Sekmekem, or Sekmem, probably some South Palestinian land, had allied itself with the "Vile Rutenu," with the result that an expedition was sent against it, in which an officer named Khusebek took part. He tells us of the war and destruction of the treacherous Sekmekem on his tombstone, which was found at Abydos. No further advance is chronicled, nor any more war with the Rutenu, who continued to live their own civilized life in their "fenced" towns, deriving their civilization chiefly from distant Babylon, and owing but little to the neighbouring Egypt, in spite of a regular commercial connexion with her, which is proved by the fairly common discoveries of Egyptian weapons and scarab-seals of the XIIth Dynasty in Palestine. A peaceful commerce was carried on by caravans of nomad or half-nomad Beduins, who found it profitable to bring their products and those of the Rutenu into Egypt and to sell them at the courts of the nome princes; the nomarch Khnumhetep in the reign of Senusert II records in his tomb at Beni Hasan the arrival in his nome of thirty-seven men and women of the "Aamu", under a hik-khaskhut or "desert-chief" named Abesha (Abishua), who brought him the green-eye paint of antimony which the Egyptians so much loved, and other products of their land. We have here a picture on a small scale of the way in which the forefathers of the Israelites journeyed into the land of Goshen.

A remarkable picture of the life of the Beduin tribes of Southern Palestine is given in the autobiography of Sanehat or Sinuhe, a scion of the Egyptian royal house, in fact probably a younger son of Amenemhat I, who fled alone from Egypt on the announcement of the death of that king, possibly from fear lest he should be maltreated by the new monarch, Senusert I. He fled by sea to Byblos (already an important city), and thence to the land of Kedme in Syria. Here he was well received by a chief named Ammuanshi (the name is characteristic of the time; cf. the probably nearly contemporary Babylonian king Ammizaduga), and, after a victorious single combat, after the manner of David and Goliath, with a hostile champion, he married the chiefs daughter, and eventually succeeded to his possessions. But in his old age he desired to end his days in Egypt, and besought permission to return. King Senusert answered with a gracious rescript, promising him his favour in life and a splendid burial: "then," he writes, "they shall give thee bandages from the hand of Tait on the night of anointing with the oil of embalming. They shall follow thy funeral, and go to the tomb on the day of burial, which shall be in a gilded coffin, the head painted with blue. Thou shalt be placed upon the bier, and oxen shall draw thee along, the singers shall go before thee, and they shall dance thy funeral dance. The women pouching at the false-door of thy stele shall chant loudly the prayers for funeral-offerings; they shall slay victims for thee at the door of thy pit; and thy stela of white limestone shall be set up among those of the royal children. Thou shalt not die in a strange land, nor be buried by the Aamu: thou shalt not be laid in a sheepskin: all people shall smite the earth and lament over thy body as thou goest to the tomb."

On his return the king received him with open arms, and the princesses, placing collars of state about their necks, and each taking a wand of ceremony in one hand and a sistrum in the other, danced the solemn Hathor dance before the king, praising him for his loving-kindness to Sanehat. Then the returned wanderer passed out of the palace hand in hand with the royal children to the house which had been prepared for him. His foreign clothes were taken away from him, and his head was shaved as an Egyptian's should be; he dressed in fine linen, was anointed with the finest oil, and once more slept on a bedstead like a civilized being, instead of on the sand like a barbarian. The king had a magnificent tomb made for him, and he ends his story with the hope that he may ever continue in the royal favour.

Highly interesting in this story is the contrast between the civilization of the Egyptians and the comparative barbarism of the Beduins, which is well brought out in the matter of funeral rites. As a matter of fact, the elaboration and complexity of the Egyptian funeral customs was one of the great points of difference between the culture of Egypt and that of the Semites, and no doubt to the Egyptian seemed conclusive proof of his higher civilization and a mark of his distinction from the surrounding barbarians.

There is little doubt that relations were also already maintained by sea with the Phoenician cities. We do not know when the Semitic migration took place that brought the Phoenicians to the Mediterranean coast, but it is very probable that it is to be placed much farther back in time than it usually has been; and we need not doubt that the chief Phoenician city-states were already in existence at the time of the Egyptian XIIth Dynasty. Byblos was connected in a very curious way with the myths of the Egyptian Delta; part of the dismembered body of Osiris after his murder by Set was said to have been washed up there in a great chest, and Isis journeyed thither to reclaim it. This points to a connection by sea between the Delta and Phoenicia in the very earliest period. Under the VIth Dynasty the city was well known to the Egyptians by the name of Kabun or Kapun, an evidently very ancient modification of its Semitic name Gebal. It is probable that the ships, called Kabuniut or "Byblos-farers," which sailed from the Nile thither, were Phoenician rather than Egyptian.

Of the relations that existed between Egypt and Greece at this time we have already spoken.

The inhabitants of the coast of Libya, then in all probability less arid than now and more able to sustain a large population, were certainly connected somewhat closely with the Aegeans, and such Greek legends as that of Athene Tritogeneia may point to very ancient relations with Libya. To the Egyptians the Libyans had much the same unsavoury reputation as their friends the Hanebu. They were always, throughout history, trying to set their feet within the charmed circle of the Delta, and share in its wealth. We hear of wars with them as early as the days of the IIIrd Dynasty, and the Egyptians seem to have been no more tolerant of these pushing poor relations of theirs in the time of the XIIth Dynasty than they had been then. Senusert I was engaged upon a Libyan expedition at the very time of the death of his father.

 

9. The Nubian Wars

 

The warlike energy of the kings of the XIIth Dynasty was chiefly directed towards the prosecution of the feud with the Nubians, which had began under the preceding dynasty. The chief motive which inspired them to this war of conquest seems to have been a higher one than mere desire of revenge or domination, namely, the wish to control the Nile more effectually, and to be able to foresee more accurately the probable height of the yearly inundation on which the prosperity of Egypt depends. The kings of this dynasty seem to have regarded the regulation of the great river as the highest duty of a ruler of Egypt, as in truth it is. Bound up with this, however, there was also a lower motive; the desire to acquire instant prosperity and wealth by the acquisition of the gold with which the Wadi 'Alaki and other Nubian desert valleys were full.

Amenemhat I tells us in his "Instructions" to his son, already referred to, that he overthrew the Wawat and Matjaiu. The Wawat were the most important tribe of Northern Nubia. And on a rock near Korosko we read the laconic record: "In the 29th year of Sehetepabra, living for ever, they came to overthrow Wawat". Senusert I invaded Nubia in the eighteenth and forty-third years of his reign. He was probably the first Egyptian monarch to march south of Wadi Haifa, as in his second expedition (the first he did not accompany in person) he reached the land of Kush (Ethiopia), now first mentioned in history.

Under his two successors we hear only of gold-seeking expeditions. But Senusert III was a fighter. His eighth, sixteenth, and nineteenth years were marked by military expeditions which finally riveted the Egyptian yoke on the necks of the Nubians. The king prepared his way before him by renewing the canal, originally dating from the time of the Vlth Dynasty, by which the First Cataract was avoided.

The king finally established the conquest by building, on the hills on each side of the river about thirty miles above the Second Cataract, the two fortresses of Semneh (Eg. Samnin, Gr. Samminci) and Kummeh (Eg. Kuddiul), which remained important throughout Egyptian history, and the ruins of which are still remarkable. At Semneh was set up a boundary-stone with the following inscription : "This is the Southern Frontier, fixed in the eighth year of His Majesty King Khakaura, living for ever. No negro is permitted to pass this boundary northward, either on foot or by boat, nor any cattle, oxen, goats, or sheep belonging to negroes, except when a negro comes to trade in the land of Akin, or on any business whatsoever; then let him be well treated. But no boat of the negroes is to be allowed to pass Heh northward for ever." The benevolent feelings of the king seem to have evaporated eight years later, after his second expedition, for a great stela set up then at Semneh contains the following inscription: "Year 16, third month of Perct, His Majesty fixed the frontier of the South at Heh. I made my boundary, for I advanced upstream beyond my forefathers; I added much thereto, (namely) what was ordained by me. For I am king, and I say it and I do it. What lay in my heart was brought to pass by my hand. I am vigorous in seizing, powerful in succeeding, never resting; one in whose heart there is a word which is unknown to the weak, one who arises against mercy; never showing mercy to the enemy who attacks him, but attacking him who attacks him; silent to the silent, but answering a word according to the circumstances. For to take no notice of a violent attack is to strengthen the heart of the enemy. Vigour is valiant, but cowardice is vile. He is a coward who is vanquished on his own frontier, since the negro will fall prostrate at a word: answer him, and he retreats; if one is vigorous with him, he turns his back, retiring even when on the way to attack. Behold! these people have nothing terrible about them; they are feeble and insignificant; they have buttocks for hearts! I have seen it, even I, the Majesty; it is no lie! I have seized their women; I have carried off their folk. I marched to their wells, I took their cattle, I destroyed their seed-corn, I set fire to it. By my life and my father's, I speak truth! There is no possibility of gainsaying what cometh forth from my mouth! And, moreover, every son of mine who shall have preserved this frontier which my Majesty hath made is indeed my son and born of my Majesty, verily a son who avengeth his father and preserveth the boundary of him who begat him. But he who shall have abandoned it, he who shall not have fought for it, behold! he is no son of mine, he is none born of me. Behold me! Behold, moreover, my Majesty hath set up an image of my Majesty upon this frontier which my Majesty makes, not from a desire that ye should worship it, but from a desire that ye should fight for it!"

This really extraordinary inscription is one of the most remarkable monuments of Egyptian literature that have survived. It gives us a good idea of the vigour of the king. In some ways it conveys the impression of being a manifesto directed against the peaceful and probably somewhat weak methods of the two preceding reigns in dealing with the Nubians; and the half-sarcastic manner in which the king exhorts his subjects not to be afraid of barbarians, and to fight for his image, not merely to worship it, is highly curious. And when we remember that it was to this dynasty that the legendary Sesostris was assigned by Manetho, we also remember the stelae which the great conqueror was said to have set up in various parts of the world, the inscriptions of which, as described by Herodotus and Diodorus, remind us oddly of the phraseology of this stele of Senusert III.

Nubian expeditions were not necessary in the reign of Amenemhat III. His predecessor had done his work well. The great king spent his reign in the prosecution of his vast works of public utility and royal splendour.

 

10. Amenemhat II and the Art of the XIIth Dynasty

 

Amenemhat III was a monarch of whom we would fain know more than we do. His building was magnificent, and in his time Egyptian art reached for a brief space a degree of naturalism which it was not to know again till the time of the heretic Akhenaten, and of power which it never again attained. The artistic development begun by the sculptors of Neb-hapet-Ra Mentuhetep continued under the kings of the XIIth Dynasty, in whose days Egyptian art may be said to have in most respects reached its apogee. The taste of the artists of the XIIth Dynasty was admirable. They were Japanese in their sense of fitness and their delicacy; Greek in their feeling for balance and proportion. The best work of the XVIIIth Dynasty is vulgar by the side of that of the XIIth. The tomb of Ameni at Beni Hasan is a revelation to those whose knowledge of Egyptian art is derived chiefly from the gigantic abominations of Karnak or Abu Simbel. Nothing so fine as the perfectly-proportioned tomb-hall of Ameni, with its beautiful pillars, was ever excavated in an Egyptian cliff in later days. And the naturalism of the multitudinous groups of wrestling men which are painted on the walls around the entrance to the inner chamber is paralleled only by that of the Greek vase-paintings of the best period: the decoration of this wall, with its contending figures painted, where in later days only stiff and formal rows of hieroglyphics would have been permitted, and with its stately geometric frame-design, reminds us of nothing so much as of the decoration of a Clazomenian sarcophagus. Nor are other tombs of this period far behind it in beauty. The smaller art of the time shews the same unparelleled excellence. The ivories, the scarabs, and the goldsmith's work are unrivalled. Nothing like the gold pectorals, and other objects, inlaid with fine stones, of the time of Senusert III which were found at Dashur, was ever made in later times in Egypt. And the great reliefs and statues of the kings, though their bodies are formal and represented in accordance with the convention fixed under the Pyramid-builders, show us portraits of a power which the artists of the IVth Dynasty cannot rival. The fidelity of these portraits we cannot question. The sculptor who depicted King Mentuhetep at Der el-Bahri set the example, and his successors who shew us the faces of Senusert I at Koptos, and of Senusert III in the series of statues from Der el-Bahri, followed and surpassed him. At Der el-Bahri the great Sesostris is shown in different figures representing hirn at different periods of his life, from a young to an old man, and two red granite heads from Abydos and Karnak confirm their portraits of the monarch in old age. It is a remarkable face, but not so remarkable as that of Amenemhat III, whose physiognomy was peculiar. We have an extraordinary portrait of this king's time apparently, in a weird figure, hung with extraordinary magical ornaments, which shews a king's head crowned with a massive wig of unique fashion. This was found at Tanis. The strange group of Nile-gods, heavy-haired and bearing offerings of fish, which comes from the same place, also owes its origin to the same school of sculpture. So apparently do the remarkable sphinxes of Tanis, which for long were regarded, from their remarkable faces, as works of the Hyksos. In them the leonine characteristics of the sphinx are emphasized in a very novel way.

Why the king bade himself and his gods to be represented thus strangely we do not know. It was an aberration from the conventional canons only once paralleled in later days, and that by a king who was half mad and wholly a heretic, in religion as well as art, Akhenaten. We cannot assume any religious heresy in Lamaris, but that he was a monarch of original and powerful mind is obvious.

Senusert III (Sesostris). British Museum

 

11. The Xlllth Dynasty and the Hyksos Invasion

 

His reign marks the apogee of the Middle Kingdom. His successors, Amenemhat IV and the queen Sebekneferura (Skemiophris), were of no account, and their successors of the XIIIth Dynasty are little more than a series of names marking a swiftly accelerating path of degeneration. All were devoted worshippers of the crocodile-god Sebek, whose name they bore, usually in the compound Sebekhetep. It would seem that from the first there was a division in the kingdom, Thebes being held by a dynasty of Thebans, of whom some bore the name Mentuhetep, and one that of Senusert (IV); while in the north, no doubt at Itht-taui, ruled the descendants of the XIIth Dynasty, Khu-taui-Ra Ugafa, Sekhem-ka-Ra Amenemhat-senbef, Sankhabra Ameni-Antef-Amenemhat, and twelve others. We only know of the Thebans from recent discoveries by M. Legrain of their statues at Karnak, and evidently they were not recognized as legitimate, since they are not mentioned in the Turin Papyrus, which only gives Khu-taui-Ra and his fourteen ephemeral successors, till we come to Sekhem-khu-taui-Ra Sebekhetep, who certainly ruled over the whole country from Bubastis to Semneh in Nubia. Then we meet with two Thebans named Sebekemsaf, also not mentioned in the Turin Papyrus, but important monarchs in their time.

They ruled and were buried at Thebes, and probably did not control the north, as contemporary with them must be two or three names in the Turin Papyrus, notably that of Ra-smenkh-ka Mermeshau, who set up statues of himself at Tanis. Then came a group of legitimate monarchs, mentioned in the Turin Papyrus, who ruled the whole land : Sekhem-suatj-taui-Ra Sebekhetep II, and the two brothers Neferhetep and Khaneferra Sebekhetep III. The monuments of the latter are found from Tanis in the north to the island of Arko in Nubia, so he probably advanced the southern boundary beyond the limit fixed by Senusert III. The succession of these princes passed in the female line; the father of Neferhetep and Sebekhetep in was a simple priest named Haankhef, but his mother Kemi was no doubt a daughter of Sebekhetep II; his mother Auhetabu, however, as well as, apparently, his father Mentuhetep, were of non-royal birth,4 so that he probably owed his throne to adoption.

Sebekhetep III was the last powerful monarch of the Middle Kingdom. His successors were ephemeral kings, only known to us from scarabs and the Turin Papyrus; Thebes was apparently independent again under princes who bore the name of Antef, and the Delta was ruled by chiefs who bore allegiance to foreign conquerors from Palestine, the famous Hyksos, who now first appear in our history. The Antefs are, as usual, not mentioned in the Turin Papyrus, but the Delta chiefs are, and one of them, Nehesi ("the Negro") is also known from a monument on which he worships the god Set or Sutekh, the tutelary deity of the Hyksos, so that he was, apparently, their vassal. These subjects of the Hyksos are apparently the XIVth (Xoite) dynasty of Manetho.

So the kingdom of the Amenemhats and Senuserts came to its end, in degeneration, division, and barbarian conquest. The Asiatic conquest is the central climacteric of Egyptian history. With it direct relations were for the first time established between Egypt and the Asiatic world. Hitherto the civilizations of Babylonia and Egypt had pursued their own ways independently, having hardly ever come into any contact with each other, so far as we know, since history first began in the Nile-valley. It is therefore possible to treat the story of Babylonian culture up to the end of Khammurabi's dynasty and Egyptian history up to the Hyksos conquest entirely independently of each other. But with the beginning of the second millennium B.C. this is no longer possible. Egypt has been brought into forcible contact with the civilized Asiatics, and henceforward she remains in close contact with them, for her weal or her woe, throughout her history.

But, while Egyptian civilization after the expulsion of the Hyksos and the conquest of Western Asia was in many ways very different from that of the preceding age of isolation, the culture of the Middle Empire differed very little from that of the Old Kingdom, as established at the close of the Archaic Period, the end of the IIIrd Dynasty; the mere transference of the centre of gravity from Memphis to Thebes altered Egyptian civilization very little. The modifications which differentiate the Egypt of the Xllth Dynasty from that of the IVth are merely the effects of time, and in the culture of the Vlth Dynasty we see the transition in progress; here we find something which we have met with under the IVth Dynasty, but do not find under the Xllth, there something which we have not met with before, but which we shall find usual under the XIIth.

 

12. The Civilization of the Old and Middle Kingdoms

 

It is therefore difficult to compare the civilization of the Middle Kingdom as a whole with that of the Old Kingdom. We might compare the art of the two periods, for art always followed royal fortunes. Under powerful kings it grew and flourished, under weak kings and amid the internecine conflict of warring nobles it languished and withered. So the fine art of the Pyramid-builders degenerated at the end of the Vlth Dynasty into the grotesque caricatures of the beginning of the Xlth, out of which, however, from the time of the great Neb-hapet-Ra Mentuhetep, developed again the splendid artistic triumphs of the XIIth Dynasty.

Religion, like art, followed the fortunes of the monarchy, for the religion of the Middle Kingdom presents us with a new phenomenon which differentiates it from that of the Old Kingdom, and was directly due to the political events of the beginning of the Xlth Dynasty. This was the appearance of a new deity, previously hardly known, who, as the patron of the Prince of Thebes, soon aspires to rank as king of the gods, as his servant had become king of men. This was Amen, already identified at the beginning of the XIIth Dynasty with Ra, the ancient patron of the Memphite kings. The Theban monarchs had to be "Sons of the Sun": the phrase had become fixed in the royal titulary, and carried with it the claim to the loyalty of all Egyptians. But they were also sons of Amen, and therefore the two gods were combined, probably by Senusert I, who built great temples for Ra of Heliopolis and Amen of Thebes, thus shewing his devotion to his double protector. The special worship of Sebek, the crocodile-god of the Fayyum, in deference to royal predilections, again distinguishes the religion of the Middle Kingdom from that of the Old. And at this time Osiris, the dead-god of Busiris in the Delta, who had under the Old Kingdom already been identified with Sokari, "the Coffined One," who presided over the Memphite necropolis, gradually advanced to the position of "Universal Lord" (Neb-r-tjer) of the world of the dead by attracting to himself the name and attributes of Khentamentiu, the ancient dead-god of Abydos in the South. "Osiris-Khentamentiu, Lord of Busiris, Great God, Lord of Abydos," is henceforth always invoked in the funerary inscriptions, and Anubis, though he is "He who is on the Serpent-Mountain and in the Oasis, Lord of the Holy Land (the Necropolis), Lord of Sepa", is but his inferior rival, and gradually becomes his son and servitor. Funerary customs under the XIIth Dynasty differed, however, but little from those in vogue under the VIth; the only noticeable development being an increase in the number and variety of those characteristic wooden models of servants that accompanied the dead to the tomb, and the first appearance of those little figures, the Ushabtiu, or "Answerers," which later became so typical a feature of Egyptian burials. The function of the ushabti was to arise and "answer" when the dead man was called upon to do work in the Underworld: "Here am I, whensoever thou callest me!" There can be little doubt that these figures of stone or wood (later also of pottery) represented slaves who at a much earlier period were immolated at the grave and buried with their master, to accompany him to the next world.

The actual condition of the living underwent alterations, owing to changes in the actual method of administering the country, which did not coincide with the division into an Old and a Middle Kingdom according to the fortune of the kings. We have a Feudal Period which bridged the gap between the two, lasting from the Vth to the XIIth Dynasty. During this period the royal officials, headed by the Vizier or Tjate ("The Man," as opposed to "the God," i.e. the King), an official who appears already in the time of Narmer, and the Mer-shema or Mertoris, the "Overseer of the South" (for Upper Egypt), had very little authority. Up till the middle of the Vth Dynasty the land and people were, so far as we can see, exclusively the property of the king, who granted to his court-nobles estates which were administered for them in their absence by his officials. Then the nobles began to reside on their estates. Taxes, at first raised every second year for the royal benefit alone, probably became local imposts, as the court grew poor. And so the great local aristocracy of feudal barons grew up, which administered the land from the end of the Vth till the middle of the XIIth Dynasty. Weak kings allowed this aristocracy to grow up, powerless kings saw it plunge the whole land into war. Then powerful kings again first curbed and then strangled it. There is then but little difference between the local magnates of the XIIth Dynasty and their predecessors of the VIth: here we see no difference between the Old and Middle Kingdoms. But the bureaucracy of town-mayors which succeeded the landed aristocracy at the end of the XIIth Dynasty is quite different from anything that had gone before ; here the later Middle Kingdom is entirely different from the earlier Middle Kingdom and the Old Kingdom.